Home > Filthy Dark(5)

Filthy Dark(5)
Author: Serena Akeroyd

I could admit that to myself.

I could admit it when I’d never thought a damn thing about what I did for a living before, because what I did was just the way of it.

As natural as night following day.

O’Donnellys worked for the family.

That was it.

How it worked.

Like clockwork.

My da had worked for his father, and his brothers had done the same—not that they were as smart as us, of course. But still. We’d turned the fam around, gotten us out of the penny-ante shit, and turned us into a corporation.

But that didn’t take away from the bones of what we were.

And I wasn’t sure if I wanted a kid of mine doing that, being involved in this crap.

The dilemma had me wondering if Finn, one of our family friends and the Points’ money man, was feeling the same way about his kid.

His wife had just had a baby, well, a while back, and I had to wonder if he thought about his son doing the shit we did.

“You’re not angry.”

The simple statement had me blinking at the opening in the ward. It was odd because it was a make-shift door with plastic sheets that were Velcroed together, so the sound of the ripping should have dragged me from my thoughts. It hadn’t.

Maybe the drugs were dulling everything.

I stared at my brother, Eoghan, and shook my head. “I will be. Just give me time.”

But he didn’t smirk at me.

He just stared at me.

Christ.

Brennan and Eoghan always saw too much.

I felt like a petri dish with the way they were both gawking at me, and I scowled at them. “What do you want me to do? Go full out Hulk on you?”

Brennan shrugged. “I think that was what I anticipated.”

“Did the doctors say he woke up too early?” Eoghan asked Brennan, pissing me off that they were talking around me, not to me.

I heaved an irritated breath. “Look, I’m tired. I need to rest.”

I didn’t.

I felt wide awake.

I was definitely more mellow than I should be, definitely a lot more chilled about this situation… yeah, had to be the drugs.

Eoghan grunted. “Stay awake for a little bit longer. Ma’s on her way. She was shitting herself.”

“Not literally, I hope,” I rumbled, trying to tease and failing.

Brennan and Eoghan didn’t crack a smile—serious fuckers. “Jesus, where’s Conor? At least he’ll laugh at my crappy jokes.”

“He’s asleep in the waiting room. We’re all exhausted because we’ve been here for two goddamn days watching over you.”

My mouth turned down. “Yeah. I get it.”

“No. I don’t think you do,” Brennan retorted.

I gritted my teeth before I muttered, “Move the pillows out from behind my head. This position hurts.”

Eoghan moved toward me and helped shuffle out the two pillows a nurse had stacked under my shoulders when I’d woken up and found Brennan sitting at my bedside.

The instant relief was enough to make me sigh heavily. I allowed myself to rock back and let my muscles settle.

“I’m just going to rest my eyes,” I mumbled, suddenly needing the peace of sleep and a spare moment to stop the buzzing in my head that had nothing to do with almost being shot, blood loss, drugs, or the aftereffects of emergency surgery.

A low hum of conversation came next, and I heard the Velcro softly open and close as they left me to the nightmare ward.

I rocked my head to the side, saw the partition between me and the other guy, Ink, the man we’d gone in to save, and saw he was out cold.

Then again, he’d been tortured. I figured it probably wasn’t the first time, judging by all the scars I could see on the parts of his body that weren’t covered up with tape, gauze, and wires, but still, torture always took it out of a person.

I pursed my lips, rolled my head up to the ceiling where those godawful surgical lights were blaring onto me, and even though it hurt, I reached up and covered my eyes with my forearm.

I needed to reassimilate things. Needed to figure out what the hell I was thinking and feeling.

I was a father.

I had a son.

That changed everything.

I just didn’t know how yet.

 

 

Two

 

 

Aela

 

 

Before

 

 

In my plaid skirt with its box pleats, a crisp linen shirt, and a heavy jacket, I felt more than just stupid. I looked it too. My squeaky leather shoes had these tiny tassels on them, for God’s sake. Throw in the knee socks, and I looked like a character from some weird show.

I wasn’t used to wearing a uniform. Back before Dad’s promotion, I’d just worn regular clothes at my regular school. Then I’d had to move to St. Mary’s Middle School for Girls, and we were now being shunted off to St. John’s High. St. Mary’s had been bad enough with its ankle-length skirts, but, and I knew this was horrendous, it hadn’t mattered at St. Mary’s.

I was just one girl among a thousand.

St. John’s was a different matter entirely.

It was mixed.

Boys were going to see me wearing this getup.

Somehow that was more nauseating than anything else, and I didn’t consider myself a vain person. My friend Deirdre, on the other hand, was totally vain, but the only reason she wasn’t bitching about the uniform and the fact that we looked like some creepy uncle’s ‘favorite’ niece was because of Declan.

Declan Shmeclan. I’d be glad to meet him at long last just because she went on about him so damn much.

Honestly, it was boring. Like, it never stopped.

Declan this and Declan that.

You’d think he was Brad Pitt with the way she could wax poetically about him. Sister Sarah would have fainted with glee if she’d shown as much imagination in English class, that was for damn sure.

I was pretty certain that Declan was either going to be the most handsome guy the world had ever seen or the most blah. The fact that our other friends had met him and seemed to agree with her told me I was in for a treat, even if it was only on the eyes.

“Stand up straight,” Mom chided me, as she shoved me against the wall beside the door.

With Dad’s promotion, we’d moved to a better building, but though that move had been two years ago, I still missed the old place. The wall beside the front door had little pencil marks measuring how tall I’d grown, and it was a ritual for us to take my first day of school pictures here.

We were making new rituals in the apartment, but it wasn’t the same.

Not much was.

Dad had never been that important in the Five Points, and he still wasn’t, but ever since he’d moved up a level, he just wasn’t around as much, and he hadn’t been around a lot before. If I missed him, I couldn’t even imagine what Mom felt. It was no wonder she was taking more and more of her happy pills. Of course, the more she took of them, the less happy she was. Go figure, huh?

I gave her a false smile because she looked so proud to see me dressed in this outfit, and I straightened my shoulders as she held her breath for a second, then hovered her finger over the button. In a snap, a Polaroid was spitting out a little photo, and she wafted it in the air, beaming at it then at me.

“You look beautiful,” she told me with a grin, dumping the picture on the hall table before bustling over and hugging me tight.

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)